Neat.
But the text on the sidebar moves by a few px when you hover the mouse over it.
Very annoying.
Why our website looks like an operating system
211–220 of 504 posts
Re: Why our website looks like an operating system
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do click yes. It still wastes my time since especially on mobile they obscure at least 1/3 of the viewport. They're just like the other popups that are now on most every site: The "Sign up for our newsletter" or "Get 10% off by signing up for emails", the paywall, the "It looks like you're using an adblocker." There's a reason people have always hated popup ads even though "just close them" has always been an optio…
You should understand that the law doesn't mandate the cookie popup to be annoying. It's a deliberate choice of websites, they want you to hate the banner and the law.
Well, it works, so it doesn’t matter that it’s the website owners doing it, since in practice the frustration lands on the EU lawmakers. That just makes the law bad: it doesn’t really prevent anything, and it leaves people a little more anti-EU.
Re: Why our website looks like an operating system
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is definitely a surprising opinion to find on HN. Usually the prevailing thought is that anything that is even remotely heavy on JavaScript is bad design and therefore inherently unusable, unportable, etc. Whereas this is essentially JavaScript maximalism.
Perhaps the amount of JavaScript used in a website is not a contributing factor into how usable a person finds it /s. Honestly, you don't judge a back-end by how much code it's built with or what platform it's hosted on. I don't get the obsession people have with JavaScript used on websites. Websites with terrible UX often abuse JavaScript yes, but correlation != causation.
It’s because they can see it.
They can go in the inspector and see “oh wow so many MBs of JS”, but they can’t see the backend.
There is a good point to that: this data that is downloaded is an end user resource. Over a mobile network etc it’ll matter. But the days where it mattered at home/office are long, long gone, at least for the audience of the websites that adopt this strategy.
The obsession I believe is a remnant of these old days. There was a transitionary period still a decade ago (when hn was already not that young) where users would spend time loading a website, then complain about the amount of js on the page and how that is unnecessary. The connections got upgraded but nothing strikes down a habit…
Re: Why our website looks like an operating system
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
> EU law is just meritless pestering of people It is that. It has done literally nothing to improve anything whatsoever, in any country. And most of the "cookie management" scripts that people use, barely even work. Both the law and the way it's complied with in practice are a dumb solution to a problem that the EU should have forced browser vendors to solve. Only the user's browser can choose not to send back cookie…
If you like things the way they were before the law, just answer yes to all cookie banners you see. It does not take time if you don’t care to read it. Yours click yes, and they will remember you want to be tracked.
The worst part. The one cookie that should remember your choice NEVER works. Never.
It doesn’t matter what site I visit and what choice I do. The next day, every single website asks me to pass through the banners again.
Re: Why our website looks like an operating system
#215> Legally-required cookie banner > PostHog.com doesn't use third-party cookies, only a single in-house cookie You're legally required to let me opt out of that cookie. Unless it's essential to the site functionality, in which case you don't need the banner at all.
I don't see any cookies saved anywhere. I do see four variables in localStorage, though. They also embed Youtube if you open the demo, which in turn tracks users (yes, even through the no-cookie subdomain: https://dustinwhisman.com/writing/youtube-nocookie-com-will-... ). Ursula von der Leyen would not be very proud.
Let's see if one of these shady lawyers who make their money by finding these violations reads HN and gets into contact with them...
Re: Why our website looks like an operating system
#216yes I am getting tired of the "scroll documents" design. The navigation is clear and useful. I feel easy browsing all the functionalities of your website. Kudos!
One thing I feed inconvenient is how to close all windows and start from the desktop again. The dinosaur is cool!
Re: Why our website looks like an operating system
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
The law has wasted billions of hours of human life and productivity. Was it worth it?
Ads industry did that. Was it worth it?
The ads industry isn’t in the business of making our lives easier. EU lawmakers are. Which is why it’s the EU that is failing in its mission here.
Re: Why our website looks like an operating system
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's practically required, because it lets everyone know that the absence of the banner is not a violation of the law. Your "logic" is baffling
What I mean is that if they don't add it, they're going to get threatening emails from regulators saying "Hey, you don't have a cookie banner". Those regulators don't have any way of knowing how their site operates, so the small banner at least manages to inform them and keep Posthog from receiving emails. That is what I meant by "practically". I mean "in a practical sense" as opposed to in a theoretical sense.
> they're going to get threatening emails from regulators saying "Hey, you don't have a cookie banner".
That literally does not happen. What world do you live in?
But just to entertain your scenario let's say that did happen: it still wouldn't matter because they could just reply and tell them why they don't need one...
Re: Why our website looks like an operating system
#219Almost perfect. Inspirational.
It just needed to create a little box you can drag around when you click on nothing, like OS desktops have.
So here's the snippet to do that, toss this in the console and live the dream:
(() => { let startX, startY, box, dragging = false;
const style = document.createElement('style');
style.textContent = `
.___selection-box {
position: absolute;
pointer-events: none;
border: 1px dashed #2b76d6;
background: rgba(43,118,214,0.12);
z-index: 999999;
}
`;
document.head.appendChild(style);
function onDown(e) {
if (e.button !== 0) return; // left click only
startX = e.pageX;
startY = e.pageY;
dragging = true;
box = document.createElement('div');
box.className = '___selection-box';
box.style.left = startX + 'px';
box.style.top = startY + 'px';
document.body.appendChild(box);
e.preventDefault();
}
function onMove(e) {
if (!dragging) return;
const x = e.pageX, y = e.pageY;
const left = Math.min(x, startX);
const top = Math.min(y, startY);
const width = Math.abs(x - startX);
const height = Math.abs(y - startY);
Object.assign(box.style, {
left: left + 'px',
top: top + 'px',
width: width + 'px',
height: height + 'px'
});
}
function onUp(e) {
if (!dragging) return;
dragging = false;
console.log('Selection rect:', box.getBoundingClientRect());
box.remove();
box = null;
}
window.addEventListener('mousedown', onDown);
window.addEventListener('mousemove', onMove);
window.addEventListener('mouseup', onUp);
console.log(" Selection enabled. Drag with left mouse button. Check console for rect.");Re: Why our website looks like an operating system
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. If they indeed only use the cookie for essential functionality, this kind of joke banner only makes their choice to respect visitors' privacy equally annoying. Even worse: because it makes it seem like the EU law is just meritless pestering of people, they are actually fighting for the right for worse sites to spy on their visitors. It's baffling.
> EU law is just meritless pestering of people It is that. It has done literally nothing to improve anything whatsoever, in any country. And most of the "cookie management" scripts that people use, barely even work. Both the law and the way it's complied with in practice are a dumb solution to a problem that the EU should have forced browser vendors to solve. Only the user's browser can choose not to send back cookie…
lol this is what it used to be like back in the day. We have forgotten the old ways and now we yearn for them. Every tutorial instructed old people to just click Always Allow or else they would not be able to read their webmail.